WHITING, Ind. (WLS) — The Whiting-Robertsdale Chamber of Commerce has opted to return a sponsorship contribution from BP Refinery earmarked for this month’s Pierogi Fest. Additionally, they intend to generate funds in support of refinery workers who have been locked out during the festival.

In a public letter, the chamber announced that they had “resolved to send back the financial sponsorship donation offered by BP Refinery.”

Pierogi Fest, a much-anticipated event, is set to take place in Whiting from July 24 to 26.

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In a gesture of community solidarity, the chamber is also arranging for donation boxes throughout the fest. The aim is to support over 800 BP employees who have been without wages since the lockout at BP’s Whiting refinery began in mid-March over contract negotiations.

Eric Schultz, who leads United Steelworkers Local 7-1, expressed appreciation: “Seeing the community rally behind us is genuinely heartening. We didn’t have to push the chamber for this outcome; it was a spontaneous decision that they felt was just and appropriate.”

The Pierogi Fest decision comes just days after the city of Hammond dropped BP as a sponsor of next week’s Festival of the Lakes.

Speaking on his “Left of Center” podcast, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott discussed that decision.

“Personally, I didn’t realize we took the money, but we did apparently, and I was like, Scott, when I hear about it on Sunday, I’m like dude, you gotta refund that immediately,” McDermott said.

The union said it has been weeks since the two sides last met at the bargaining table. Union officials say the four-month lockout has placed increasing strain on workers and their families.

“Obviously the financial burden, people trying to find a couple of jobs to make ends meet or people moving out of state to find another job that’s comparable,” Schultz said.

Messages left by ABC7 for BP requesting comment were not returned Friday.

Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany Mahomes, enjoyed an evening out with friends Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, attending their second NFL wedding in just a week.

The couples came together to celebrate JuJu Smith-Schuster’s wedding. Smith-Schuster, a former Super Bowl champion alongside Kelce and Mahomes, married fitness coach Laura Kruk at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Orange County, California, on Friday.

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, in their first public appearance since their lavish New York City wedding on July 3, drew quite the attention. Accompanying them were their good friends, Patrick and Brittany Mahomes.

Although Patrick and Brittany have been married for four years and share three children, the couple exuded a newlywed aura akin to Kelce and Swift’s.

Throughout the event, Brittany and Patrick were often seen by the side of Kelce and Swift, standing prominently next to the Grammy-winning artist and the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end during the ceremony.

The foursome shared a laugh as they walked into the ceremony, the new husband and wife hand-in-hand behind the Mahomeses. 

The couples were seated next to one another on the pristine lawn of the luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel as they watched Smith-Schuster and Kruk exchange vows. 

They collectively beamed and rose to their feet to toast the bride and groom as they were officially declared husband and wife. 

Later, Brittany and the Shake It Off hitmaker appeared in deep conversation as they took a seat next to one another during the wedding breakfast. 

The two women even color coordinated in varying shades of pink for the occasion. Brittany wowed in a $1,690 high-neck coral gown from Silvia Tcherassi that hugged the mother-of-three’s toned figure. 

She accessorized with hot pink heels and a matching clutch, as well as a white fan, which she used to shelter her face from the searing California sun during the ceremony. 

Meanwhile, Swift looked elegant in a strapless pale pink brocade gown, pairing it with her signature red lip. 

It came one week after Brittany and Mahomes had helped celebrate Kelce and Swift’s own wedding spectacular. 

The signal caller and his longtime partner were among an estimated 1,000 guests at Madison Square Garden as teammate and close friend Kelce tied the knot with Swift in an extravagant ceremony. 

Mahomes and Brittany have become close couple friends with Travis and Taylor ever since they launched their romance in 2023.

They led a huge Chiefs contingent at the lavish wedding, along with the likes of owner Clark Hunt and his family, coach Andy Reid and virtually the entire roster of players.

Mahomes shared a series of photos to Instagram following the blockbuster bash in the Big Apple. 

The first three photos, which were seemingly taken before Travis and Taylor’s big night, showed Brittany wearing a stunning light blue dress and a sparkling silver necklace, while Patrick is donning a slick tuxedo and shades. 

The couple were seen embracing in one of the images, while one shows them in the back of a taxi, most likely on their way to MSG.

Two other photos in his New York dump captured him in a suave double-breasted suit, with Brittany opting for an elegant olive dress with gold shoes.

It is unclear when the group outing took place and whether the Mahomeses were at Travis and Taylor’s more intimate rehearsal dinner on Thursday evening.

After attending the wedding, they made a quick trip back to Kansas City on Saturday to celebrate the 4th of July at their family home. 

Brittany shared photos and videos on her Instagram story of Patrick treating their children to a firework show in their back garden, just 24 hours after celebrating with their good friends in New York. 

However, it was just a quick pitstop in Missouri before the couple made the journey over to California for Friday’s wedding. 

Kelce and Mahomes are no longer teammates with Smith-Schuster, with the wide receiver recently leaving the Chiefs to sign for the New York Giants.

However, they appear to have remained close friends with Kelce even celebrating Smith-Schuster’s Giants signing on social media.

Smith-Schuster won a Super Bowl alongside Kelce, back at the end of the 2023 season when the Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles, who had Jason Kelce on their team.

After that victory, Smith-Schuster briefly joined the New England Patriots and Kelce was unhappy with the Chiefs letting him leave.

Smith-Schuster only spent a season in New England before returning to the Chiefs.

In a disturbing case unfolding in New Jersey, a woman has been accused of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13. According to court filings, she allegedly recorded the abuse and circulated at least one video on Snapchat.

Victoria Anne Cranmer, aged 25, was taken into custody on Tuesday. She faces several charges, including second-degree sexual assault, second-degree creation of child sexual abuse material, third-degree possession of such material, and third-degree child endangerment.

Officials assert that Cranmer recorded a 14-second video on May 6th in the bathroom of a Little Egg Harbor residence where she was supervising the child.

Investigators managed to identify Cranmer in the video thanks to several notable tattoos, including one on her leg portraying breasts, as reported by the media outlet.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, the investigation began May 20 after the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency referred the allegations to the Little Egg Harbor Police Department and the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit. Detectives later obtained search warrants for both a cellphone allegedly used by Cranmer and her Snapchat account, where investigators said they uncovered additional videos saved in Snapchat’s Memories feature.

According to the affidavit, the cellphone had been purchased for Cranmer by a former roommate as a birthday gift. After asking Cranmer to move out, the roommate requested she leave the phone behind. While reviewing its contents, the roommate allegedly discovered the recording, saved the video and later turned the device over to investigators, according to the affidavit.

Investigators also allege Cranmer was laughing while assaulting the child in the video, according to the court according to court documents cited by NJ.com.

At least one of the alleged recordings was shared on Snapchat, New Jersey 101.5 reported.

Cranmer was booked into the Ocean County Jail, where she is being held without bail.

News Media has reached out to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office for additional information and to determine whether Cranmer has legal representation.

Being a descendant of Italian heritage on both sides of my family, I find it disheartening to suspect our mayor may not hold Italy—or its people—in high regard.

Unsurprisingly, the same individual who once displayed contempt for a Columbus statue during his radical activism days has now introduced a controversial map of New York City. This map seemingly erases any representation of Italian communities, ignoring well-known areas like Arthur Avenue, Little Italy, and Staten Island.

I cannot pinpoint what exactly occupies Zohran Mamdani’s thoughts.

Perhaps he was never able to secure a reservation at the coveted Rao’s restaurant before his tenure as mayor, or maybe a disappointing slice of pizza led to this perspective.

Nonetheless, I believe the root of his indifference toward individuals like myself is more nuanced than mere ethnic bias.

It involves his broader worldview, something called cultural Marxism, which defines the Italian American experience here in New York and elsewhere as a lie.

Yes I know, the Marxism usually associated with our mayor is of the economic variety: demonizing the rich, government-owned grocery stores, free buses, higher taxes to provide more welfare support to migrants here legally or illegally. 

He boasts about replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

Go deeper into what makes Mamdani tick — his past musings about wealth, the radicals he’s appointed to various positions, his academic training in Africana Studies and his far-leftist, critical-theorist Columbia professor father, Mahmood Mamdani  — and you’ll understand that collectivism is only part of what animates our mayor.

He holds a worldview that divides Americans into tribes based not on Marx’s classic interpretation (which would be class), but on race. 

Under the theory of cultural Marxism, all things are oppressor versus oppressed. 

It ignores swaths of history in favor of grievance against Western civilization — the ultimate oppressor of the Third World, the historically oppressed.

Hence you have one mayoral appointee calling homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy” that the government should seize. 

Another, his chief equity officer no less, mused on social media about her disdain for white liberal women (they apparently can’t overcome their whiteness) and how government should “tax these people to the white meat.” 

The mayor’s wife apparently believed that the Oct. 7 massacre of innocent Israelis involved a “mass rape hoax.” 

The mayor himself has never disavowed “globalize the intifada,” the rallying cry of cultural Marxism that aims at wiping Israel off the map.

How have Italians — particularly most Italian Americans, who descend from an economically backward area of Europe — or Jews — who have faced centuries of persecution — fallen afoul of this ideology? 

For Jews it’s the success of Israel, both economically and in defending itself against decades of invasions and terrorism from the allegedly oppressed people the cultural Marxists say need defending.

For Italians, I think the lefty beef comes from a different place: anger that they never fell for the oppression narrative.

Most came here from the impoverished south of Italy, the Mezzogiorno region, around the turn of the last century.

They were offered no welfare (or Obamacare) and they weren’t considered “white” by the standards of the time.

Consider the background of Yankee great Yogi Berra, who grew up in the Italian enclave of St. Louis known as “Dago Hill.” 

When his parents came to America, George Will wrote in Berra’s obituary, “an 1895 advertisement seeking labor to build a New York reservoir said whites would be paid $1.30 to $1.50 a day, ‘colored’ workers $1.25 to $1.40, and Italians $1.15 to $1.25.”

But they prospered nonetheless.

My grandfather and uncles helped build the city subway system. 

Years later, my father gained entry to the very union that had denied membership to my grandfather because of the vowel at the end of our name. 

My paternal grandfather grew up in the Italian-American ghetto known as East Harlem, my mom’s side in Little Italy, my parents in Bronx.  

They were poor Italian neighborhoods that became working class (left off Mamdani’s map, of course) not just because of preference, but also because of redlining.

Yet we all became “Americans” — and were better off for it. 

My father served in the Marines, went to trade school and saved to own a home. 

I went to graduate school; my brother is an MD and PhD who runs a New York City hospital. 

DEI didn’t aid our ascent.

If you rewrite that history of Italian-Americans, if you cleanse their story from the history books, you can start a whole new one from the ashes,

That’s what the cultural Marxists are aiming for. Don’t let them. 

On Friday, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce made their debut as a married couple, marking a special moment in their blossoming relationship.

Both 36, the celebrated singer and the NFL star graced the wedding of Kelce’s former Kansas City Chiefs teammate, JuJu Smith-Schuster, just days after their own lavish $50 million ceremony held at Madison Square Garden.

The couple showed their support for Smith-Schuster as he married Laura Kruk at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California, as reported by Page Six.

Taylor Swift turned heads in a strapless pink brocade gown complemented by her iconic red lipstick, while Travis Kelce looked dashing in a classic grey suit.

The newlyweds were seen entering the ceremony hand-in-hand, exuding joy in their newlywed glow.

A number of Kelce’s Chiefs teammates, including quarterback Patrick Mahomes and wife Brittany, are also expected to be in attendance.

Smith-Schuster, who now plays for the New York Giants, and his bride, fitness influencer Laura Kruk, were guests at Swift and Kelce’s wedding n July 3. 

Kruk unfortunately ended up suffering an embarrassing wardrobe clash, wearing the same $795 Sau Lee silky brown dress as Swift’s childhood best friend Abigail Anderson Berard.

Swift and Kelce’s attendance on Friday comes exactly one week after they celebrated their own love in their wedding extravaganza in New York City. 

The couple exchanged 20-minute vows in front of a star-studded guestlist that included almost all of Kelce Chiefs teammates. 

Following the blockbuster celebration, the three-time Super Bowl winner and pop sensation jetted off from New York to enjoy ‘complete privacy’ over the July 4th weekend and the past few days at the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana. 

They were spotted touching down in California on Thursday when Swift’s private jet flew from Montana to Bob Hope International airport in Burbank, California. 

Daily Mail footage captured dozens of umbrellas opening to conceal the couple as they disembarked the plane. The hidden figures then entered a convoy of cars, which appeared to whisk Swift and her new hubby off to her Beverly Hills mansion, 15 miles away.

Smith-Schuster’s wedding is expected to be a brief hiatus from Swift and Kelce’s romantic honeymoon. 

After the wide receiver’s nuptials, Swift and Kelce are expected to depart for the main leg of their honeymoon tour, with reports suggesting island-hopping around Greece and wider Europe might be on the cards.

Exclusive Daily Mail footage showed how the New York arena had been transformed into a fairytale wonderland, complete with life-sized trees, a towering castle-like structure and elaborate floral arrangements, which alone are said to have cost around $5million.

Among the more than 1,000 guests packed into MSG were Selena Gomez, Ed Sheeran, Bradley Cooper and Dakota Johnson. Adam Sandler officiated and Paul McCartney performed at the reception.

Kelce and Smith-Schuster are no longer teammates, with the wide receiver recently leaving Kelce and the Chiefs to sign for the New York Giants. 

However, they appear to have remained close friends with Kelce even celebrating Smith-Schuster’s Giants signing on social media. 

Smith-Schuster won a Super Bowl alongside Kelce, back at the end of the 2023 season with the Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles, who had Jason Kelce on their team.

After that victory, Smith-Schuster briefly joined the New England Patriots and Kelce was unhappy with the Chiefs letting him leave.

Smith-Schuster only spent a season in New England before returning to the Chiefs.

While the wideout and the majority of the current Chiefs roster received an invitation to Kelce’s wedding extravaganza last week, not everyone made the cut.

A Chiefs player has told the Daily Mail that the wedding invite drama has sparked locker-room chaos within Kelce’s team – with the apparent decision not to invite the controversial kicker Harrison Butker in particular having led to snipy text messages in various group chats between teammates.

Butker, a devout Catholic and outspoken Trump supporter who has won three Super Bowls alongside Kelce, gave a memorably divisive commencement speech at the Benedictine College in Kansas in 2024.

He referred to pride month as ‘a deadly sin’ and suggested women might consider prioritizing being a ‘homemaker’ over a career.

At the time, Kelce said he disagreed with Butker’s views. Swift, of course, is an outspoken Democrat and Trump critic.

Now the Chiefs player, who asked to remain anonymous, says: ‘It’s really their wedding and I understand why they wouldn’t have invited [Butker]. But there’s some difference of opinion [between players]. Lots of texts are going around the team and some people who are close to Harrison feel like he was snubbed.

‘The general idea was that there was a blanket invite for the team, but [every other player] received something individually. If Harrison had really wanted to come, he probably could have. But they’re not close, so… he wasn’t going to go, even if he had been invited.’

As a result, the Chiefs player added: ‘There’s now a lot of gossip going on. Training camp [for the new NFL season] starts in three weeks and it’s going to be a whole thing. A lot of guys want it to be drama [between Butker and Kelce]. They just like that s**t… a couple of the guys are being messy and texting Harrison to see what he thinks. We’re like a high school team sometimes.’ 

It is unclear if Butker received an invitation to Smith-Schuster’s wedding ceremony.  

Furthermore, after Thursday night’s more intimate rehearsal dinner – also held at MSG but for only 100 of the couple’s nearest and dearest – the Daily Mail exclusively reported how some of Kelce’s NFL ‘circle’ had been left upset.

‘Not everyone on the team has the same invite,’ a source said, adding that certain players had been disappointed to discover they had been left out of the more intimate Thursday dinner, and only invited to Friday’s blowout.

Then on Monday, Taylor Lewan and Will Compton, ex-NFL players turned podcasters and, so they thought, good friends of Kelce, poured fuel on the fire by publicly outing themselves as two ‘snubbed’ pals who had not even been invited to Friday’s event.

Compton said he is ‘flabbergasted’. Lewan wondered if the exclusion was ‘a personal shot’ fired by Kelce.

In a grave legal development, prosecutors are pushing for the death penalty in the case of an illegal immigrant accused of a heinous crime in Florida. The individual in question, having previously been deported, allegedly murdered a Florida woman and subsequently sought refuge in a sanctuary city.

This case involves 44-year-old Shahidul Islam, a Bangladeshi national. On Wednesday, he was formally charged by a grand jury in Lake County, Florida. The indictment accuses him of premeditated first-degree murder in connection with the fatal shooting of his sister-in-law, Monica Islam, on May 2, 2025.

The tragic series of events began on the same day authorities noted Monica Islam as missing. She was last seen heading toward Shahidul Islam’s vehicle. Later, her body was discovered with a gunshot wound to the head by the roadside, unveiling the grim reality of her murder, as detailed by State Attorney Bill Gladson from the Fifth Judicial Circuit.

Critical to the investigation were the online activities of Shahidul Islam on the morning of the incident. Authorities revealed he engaged in numerous searches deemed “suspicious,” adding a layer of suspicion to his actions leading up to the crime.

A search warrant uncovered bloodstains matching Monica Islam’s DNA in Shahidul Islam’s car, along with a bullet lodged in the passenger door and a shattered passenger window.

Following the killing, Gladson said Shahidul Islam rented a car and drove to New York City.

He was later tracked down in a joint effort between local, state and federal law enforcement partners.

After being prosecuted and sentenced for his unlawful entry into the U.S., Shahidul Islam was extradited back to Lake County. He is currently being held without bond at the Lake County Detention Facility.

Gladson’s office announced on Wednesday it is seeking the death penalty, citing the severe nature of the crime and its impact on the victim’s family.

“No family should ever have to endure the pain of such a senseless and horrific act of violence as this one,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia wrote in a statement. “Shahidul Islam illegally entered our country after being deported, committed this heinous crime, and then fled to a sanctuary city.”

Ingoglia added Florida “will continue to stand firm against violent crime, sanctuary cities and illegal immigration,” and “will never apologize for putting the safety of law-abiding families first.”

Gladson said that while “no prosecution can restore the life that was taken,” his office intends to “pursue justice on their behalf and hold this offender accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to News Media’s request for comment.